I LOVE to clean house.

OK, so not really.  In my imaginary world I love to clean house.  In my real world I hate it.  I'm terrible at it, too busy for it, and it makes me sick.  Literally.  I'm allergic to dust and though that sounds like simply a convenient thing to be allergic to, it's actually true.

When I was a little girl my pillow and bed were both covered in plastic with a sheet and pillowcase over the plastic so it wasn't dangerous.  It was hot and noisy but it made my life bearable.  As an adult I've been introduced to the wonderment that is the Super 90 Whole House Filter System.

There are many filtering systems out there.  And they all proclaim one thing or the other.  The Super Filter is rated a MERV 11.  I know, I know.  You have no idea what that is and you don't care.  Too bad, I'm telling you anyway.  MERV is what filters are rated in, like movies are rated PG, PG-13, and R.  Only MERV is rated in numbers from 1 to 16.  MERV 1 is a filter that you can see through and filters out things like cats, dogs, and possibly mice.  MERV 14-15 are filters in ICU units of hospitals.  So you can see the grading system.

The Super filter is 11, as I said, which means it is absolutely perfect for your house.  With super high filtration and not ridiculous prices.

Now that we have that all settled and you are informed, let me tell you about me.  After all, that's what a blog is all about, right?  Me writing about me to the saps willing to read about me?  I meant to say: the amazingly intelligent people.  Of course.

So, I hate cleaning and I especially hate cleaning imaginary dirt, as I like to call.  The subtle dusting of dust that no one without a white glove ever notices.  I like to leave it till anyone would notice.  I like to clean when things are good and dirty.  And since I am sick for the entire day AFTER dusting I like to almost never do it.  Because I don't like to be sick.  And because I don't like to be sick I look like this when I am dusting:

I hate that mask!  It is so hot.  And my littlest one loves the duster and uses it like a sword, thus getting even more dust all stirred up.  Ugh!

Fortunately for me, I have a Super Filter.  And Super Filters don't let much dust through. 

There are a few rules for optimal usage. 

One:  you have to let the fan on your furnace blow most the time (this is an easy setting on most thermostats, "fan on".)

And two: you have to keep your windows closed if you are allergic to outdoor things.  For example, in the fall I'm terrible allergic to ragweed.  If I sit in my house, filter on, windows & doors closed, and a 24 hour pill in my system I can survive with little struggle.  But should I happen to venture outside into the unknown, unfiltered (and therefore pollen & dander filled) air than all bets are off on how long I can breath comfortably through my nose or see anything out of my scratchy, miserable eyes.

But here is the real deal.  I only dust monthly.  No joke.  That filter keeps so much junk out of my air that I rarely have to wear my horrible mask.  As a matter of fact I hired a housekeeper three weeks ago.  It was GLORIOUS!!!  My house sparkled like you cannot believe.  Now, three weeks later, I decided I ought to do a little bit of cleaning myself.  After picking up random toys in bizarre places, cleaning the bathrooms, and mopping the kitchen floor I decided to do the dreaded dusting.  I donned my mask and went to town.  And guess what?  There was almost none.  Three weeks later it was like she had just been there.  AWESOME!

The other perk of a better filter is you don't have to change it monthly.  Which saves money.  Which in my book is a good thing.  My sweet husband decided to change the filter today, a full six months after changing it before.  But remember, I just dusted and there wasn't any dust.  Six months into the filter.  I took a picture of it just to prove it easily could have gone another 2 months if not another 6 months:

It does look dirty, it's true, but it wasn't SUPER dirty (you can still see the yellow peeking through the dirt) and a super filter can get super dirty and still be filtering great!

The final thing is a better filter makes your HVAC system last longer.  And work more efficiently.  Which saves energy.  Which again, saves money.

So in recap: I love my super filter because I hate to dust & it helps me not have to; it saves me money on allergy medicine and makes me less miserable; it saves me money by saving energy and making my HVAC system last longer; it saves me money and hassles because I don't have to replace it as often.

Oh, yeah!

And if you already have this system make sure you get our Comfort News, either via mail or e-mail, so you can get in on our buy 2, get 1 sale we run every year!  We'll announce it on Facebook too.  Become a fan!

Family Food

In addition to HVAC stuff, I'm also a busy mom and work very hard to find solutions to every day household concerns. In our quarterly newsletter, The Comfort News, we have always shared recipes and money and time saving tips. And I wanted to continue the tradition here on my blog for all our loyal readers. So I hope to pepper the furnace and air conditioning talk with practical info you can use to save time, energy, and money. Because that's what we do at David White Services: we save you energy & money! Why not keep it going in other things you do?


The internet has been an amazing resource for me and I thought I would spend some time regularly on here to share helpful hints on home organization, budgeting, and family fun.


A few months ago I found a blog on a 30 meal plan. I'm new to the blogging world and don't know how it all works but I don't want to claim this idea as my own so I'm giving a shout out to littlenannygoat who has a great blog and posted about this in May 2009. Hopefully this is sufficient credit so she knows that I'm not stealing from her (not that I have any readers anyway since I'm too chicken to tell anyone I'm blogging!)


Anyway, this seemed genius to me as I always seem to go in spurts of cooking and then getting sick of cooking and ordering pizza/junk food/eating out. I'm sure I can't be the only mom out there who just gets SOOOO tired of figuring out a weekly menu, grocery shopping, and cooking. It's not like I don't have a very full life without being a short order cook 3 times a day (plus snacks every 1-2 hours with a three year old!) And with prices the way they are right now, just one week of not knowing what I'm eating every day can make us $100.00 poorer than normal not to mention I gain 2 pounds I then have to lose! Argh!!!!


So having 30 meals that I know my family will eat; then a list which I just circle what we've used up and replace at that week's grocery shopping trips seemed quite smart.  I wrote each Meal and recipes on a big index card which I laminated and bought a holder at Dollar Tree that has a magnet on the back to stick on the fridge.  They all just go in there.  In the morning I pull out the one I'm gonna make that night and stick it on the fridge by itself.  I do any prep work then (I'm a morning person) and when I come home at night it's a no brainer as to what's for dinner.  Even better when it's a crockpot meal or a casserole I can make all the way so dinner is like 90% done before I ever even get home!


Below I have the names of the recipes which we have settled on. I chose these for their kid-friendly nature without being boring for adults, their versatility, cheap, easy to find ingredients, and ease of preparation. I'm not going to include the recipes in today's blog, just the names. But I will post them all within the month. If I'm really on top of it, I'll try to get to it within the next few weeks. And if I ever figure out how to truly blog maybe I can make the names below clickable so it would take you to the entry with the recipe! That would awesome but not currently within my skill set. Here's to the future! And as soon as I get the recipes all on here, I'll publish the grocery list.  It has like 80 items on it, but remember it's for a whole month.


The Meals:

Meal One: Meatloaf Cups, Twice Baked Potato Casserole, Steamed Broccoli

Meal Two: Spinach Calzones, Italian Salad

Meal Three: Pulled Pork Sandwiches, Hamburger Buns, Frozen Potatoes (like wedges or fries)

Meal Four: Chicken Parmesan, Steamed Asparagus, Breadsticks

Meal Five: Hamburgers, Chips, Baked Beans

Meal Six: Fajitas, Spanish Rice

Meal Seven: Pepperoni Pizza Wheels, Lite Caesar Salad

Meal Eight: Breakfast for Dinner

Meal Nine: Oriental Pork Tenderloin, Brown Rice, Chinese Veggies

Meal Ten: Black Bean Quesadillas, 1 Point Mexican Soup

Meal Eleven: Easy, Homemade Pizza

Meal Twelve: Easy Turkey Dinner

Meal Thirteen: Thai Chicken, Brown Rice, Steamed Veggie

Meal Fourteen: Chile Rellenos Casserole, Tortilla Chips

Meal Fifteen: Spaghetti and Meatballs, Steamed Broccoli, Garlic Bread

Meal Sixteen: Chicken Stroganoff, Noodles, Green Beans

Meal Seventeen: General Tso's/Terriyaki Chicken Stirfry

Meal Eighteen: Frozen Eggrolls, Hot and Sour Soup

Meal Nineteen: Tostadas

Meal Twenty: Spinach and Ricotta Shells, Garlic Bread, Salad

Meal Twenty-one: Chili, Corn Chips or Bread

Meal Twenty-two: Fried Rice, Oriental Chicken, Steamed Snap Peas

Meal Twenty-three: Salsa Chicken, Spanish Rice

Meal Twenty-Four: Easy Ravioli Bake, Texas Toast, Steamed Broccoli

Meal Twenty-Five: Philly Cheesesteak, Chips

Meal Twenty-Six: Spice Crusted Chicken Breast, Orange Salsa, Fajita Veggies

Meal Twenty-Seven: BBQ Biscuit Cups, Corn, Frozen Potatoes

Meal Twenty-Eight: Mexican Meatloaf, Baked Sweet Potatoes,

Meal Twenty-Nine: Ham and Cheese Quiche, Applesauce, Bacon

Meal Thirty: Meatball Subs, Green Beans


 

Power outages are so inconvenient.

Saturday night I decided to run to the store to get more scrapbooking tape so I could finish my Yellowstone scrapbook.  I also decided to get some CVS deals that ended Saturday night so I grabbed the flyer and coupons and headed to town.  As I pulled onto East State Street the stop lights were out and I knew the power was out.  At our house we had electricity so I didn't realize.  I just did a u-turn and went home, disappointed I had wasted my time and gasoline.

The next morning I went back into town to get the new week's CVS deals and I still needed tape.  And though everyone had electricity again, the cash registers were all a mess and everything had to be done manually.

Power outages wreak havoc on communities.  And the average family experiences more than 5 major power outages a year!  Boy, it feels more often than that in our area.  And it also seems like instead of being 24 hours or so it is days on end.  Two years ago in the middle of winter we were out for more than a week and last year we were once out for almost a week.  And we actually felt prepared and resourceful.  We had plenty of food and water.  We had games and books and headlamps with full batteries so we could move around.  We have two gas fireplaces so we weren't cold. And we have a gas stove so we could cook.  Yet even still, candle light got old VERY quickly.  With three kids it just isn't romantic nor appealing at all.

As we head into the seasons of high winds, ice, and snow I find myself being less and less willing to spend days and weeks on end at the mercy of AEP.

And there really is another option.  An option that more of our customers are seeking and which we have installed at David White Services.  A standby generator system.

We sell General Electric standby generators.  This is different from the noisy and bothersome portable generators which require you to run an extension cord and are very limited in what you can power.  A permanent standby generator system allows you to function with minimal interruptions to your normal life.  Your food won't spoil and your basement won't flood and with some organization you can continue to use your hair dryer in the morning, your oven at dinnertime, and not miss important football games.  Yes, I have had a Superbowl interrupted!!!  The horror of it all!

Standby generators have gas engines but are quiet.  The systems can be connected to your natural gas line or liquid propane tank and generate electricity as long as fuel is supplied, no power company needed.  Also, standby generators use an automatic transfer switch.  This means that when the power goes out, the automatic transfer switch turns on the generator, whether you're home or not, and automatically shuts it off when the power comes back on.

Unlike portable generators, standby generators operate automatically with no human intervention.

The first step in picking your home standby generator is to determine if you want to power your whole house, essential circuits, or somewhere in between.  One of the biggest misconceptions about home standby generators is that they restore or provide power to the entire house.

But "whole house" is really dependent on the size of your house.  If you wanted to power a doghouse, a tiny generator would work.  If you own a mansion, you'd need a huge generator.

The majority of us have limited budgets.  But buying a smaller standby generator which keeps your heating (or cooling) running, your deep freezer frozen, and/or your sump pump pumping and also allows you to run one or two other electrical items at the same time is affordable enough to be in the price bracket of those of us who live somewhere in between a dog house and a mansion.

David White Services can help you plan for being inconvenienced.  And, as always, our estimates are free.

Ack! The summer is gone!

I learned something very valuable with the beginning of this blog: never start a blog in June!  Summer is just so busy with kids off school, yard work, vacation, and being busy installing air conditioning for our hot customers.

But the kids start school tomorrow.  Backpacks are packed, lunches are in the fridge, and the teachers were properly met this evening.  It's 9:00 pm and the kids are in bed.  Perfect blogging time.  Nothing is better for a mom than the first week of school, except maybe the last day of school.  I find myself equally excited for both, for the summer break of monotony and for the delightful start of a more regular schedule again come August.

So, hopefully, I will be a better blogger as fall comes.  Though I've already seen that I won't be able to just keep the Monday/Friday schedule.  I'm just not a scheduled person enough and if I want this to work, it needs to be not only about me and HVAC but also workable with who I really am.  And that is not a woman on a schedule.  Flexibility is a more important word in my vocabulary, so I'm dumping any kind of pretense of knowing when I'll blog.

But I do know that tomorrow I'm going to post about generators.  We had a power outage here in our part of Ohio and AEP customers were quite annoyed, including me.  We can help!  Take the power back into your own hands and don't be stranded in the dark.

More tomorrow!